Inside Bangkok's Red Shirt 'fortress'
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The anti-government Red Shirts now occupy a huge swath of this city's luxury shopping and hotel district.
Five-star hotels have been emptied of guests. Empty malls, usually packed with the city's middle class, now sit in ghostly silence, most doors boarded or locked, the roads beside them a sea of red.
The NBC bureau is in a building within this "red zone," and to walk outside is to enter something resembling a country fair. Traditional northern Thai music, the upbeat rhythms of Isaan , blares from a large stage, relayed through a series of speakers and video screens around the zone.
The faces of the protesters in the heart of the zone are mostly those of craggy, middle-aged farmers, as they line up for pungent Isaan food. The road in front of our building is usually one of the most congested in the city. Now it’s lined with tents and stalls, selling everything from food and drink to cellphone chargers, clothes and souvenirs, even flip-flop shoes with pictures of their nemesis, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva .
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Examiner.comThank You Michael Jackson for your life long charity workExaminer.comAugust 1993: With Pepsi-Cola Thailand, donated $40000 to Crown Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn's charity, the Rural School Children and Youth Development and more »
